Storytelling and Oral Narration

Storytelling is a universal human activity and oral narration - particularly modern conversational narration such as anecdotes or personal stories - has long been fertile ground for linguists working on tense usage across a variety of languages.

Introduction of Performed Oral Storytelling

This book introduces performed oral storytelling into the debate, using data from traditional and contemporary storytellers in French to explore the narrative tenses attested, the discourse-pragmatic effects of tense switching, the structures deployed at points of temporal sequence, as well as broader questions concerning the nature of oral discourse.